Residents of Leeds have woken up to find a boat lodged in a tree in the middle of Briggate, the handsome pedestrian-only street at the heart of the city's shopping district. The unexpected shipwreck, 14 metres across and four tall, is the first major public installation to mark the beginning of the Overworlds and Underworlds event.

The internationally-acclaimed artist filmmakers, the Quay Brothers, have designed this temporary installation as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Overworlds and Underworlds, happening from tomorrow, Friday 18 May until Sunday night, will see the pair, plus a group of carefully selected fellow-artists, using the city centre of Leeds as their canvas.

This is the first project by Leeds Canvas, an arts consortium chosen three years ago as the Yorkshire region winner of a commission for Artists Taking the Lead. The commission is one of 12 across the UK which are celebrating the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics.

Initially the arts council invited proposals for a large piece of public art in all the English regions. That's when the consortium came together and made a very basic invitation. We would say to an artist, here's our city, our people, our buildings, make a piece of art which explores and celebrates that.

The free event will include three days of public performances and installations involving light, live music, dance and film. However, specific details of the event are being kept secret until closer to the weekend. Dearden says:

What we want is for people to suddenly be surprised by happenings in their own city or visitors seeing things in the city that have never been seen before.

All along with the brothers what we want to make is a piece of art based on the city. Based on themes in city life, the flow and movement of people and of water around the city. So the day-to-day activities in the city suddenly becoming strange with strange interventions being made, whether by physical objects or moving objects or people.

Briggate in Leeds. Now it's got a shipwreck in a tree. Photograph: Richard Klune/Corbis

Leeds Canvas said they chose the Quay Brothers because of their previous work in Leeds creating art installations for Leeds Art Gallery. They also knew that the brothers had always had a fascination for the Dark Arches under the city's main train station.

Dearden explains why Canvas is hosting a fleeting public art event rather than a lasting installation.

By choosing the Quay Brothers we always knew we weren't going to get a monumental sculpture. They work with light; they work in that ephemeral way. We knew it would be an amazing thing that came out of the city that would be there for a period and then disappear again. But hopefully it is one of those interventions where it is something that becomes part of peoples' memories or the way they talk about the city.

Overworlds and Underworlds will begin on Briggate in Leeds city centre, including the illustrious late 19th century arcades and leading down to the mysterious underworld of the Dark Arches. Dominic Gray, projects director at Opera North says:

The idea of Overworlds and Underworlds is that we've got these very mysterious atmospheric worlds, one underneath and one above.

There are subterranean movements going on underneath our feet that are historical as well as physical, the movements of people over hundreds of years. Overworlds is the angels and the things we aspire to, the things that are in the air that we glimpse out of the corner of our eye. The project is about how us, the living people, walk between one or the other and negotiate our map through a city where those things are going on.

The Dark Arches. No place to be in a power cut. Photograph: Tom Arber

Dearden hopes that the event will leave a lasting legacy of collaboration between the artists.

It's important to mention that it has not just been about the core team of chief executives or artistic directors. People from different levels have been working together, including the education and marketing teams who have collaborated for the first time. So hopefully the legacy of this, apart from the artistic legacy, will be a much closer relationship between those key organisations in the future.

He has also enjoyed his time with the Quay Brothers:

It's been fantastic working with them, it's been wonderful to go and meet them in their studio. In this very unique working space, you knock on door in the south of London, open it up and suddenly you are in this junk room of a Russian monastery, lots of icons, books, decanters, you could spend years in there exploring. And at the other end there is this high-tech editing suite where they are making films with the newest equipment.

Leeds Canvas expects Overworlds and Underworlds to be an event that will be remembered for years to come. Dearden says:I think when people see some of the set pieces there will be a sense of wonder and fun. I expect that on Friday and Saturday night people will be taking photos of themselves in front of these amazing things and it will become part of the photographic record of the city and part of the way people talk about the city in the future.